Lexington Hotel

LANDMARK STATUS for the former Lexington Hotel, once a brothel and the headquarters of the Capone mob, was unanimously approved Monday by a committee of the Chicago City Council. The 10-story hotel at Michigan Avenue and Cermak Road, which was also known as the New Michigan Hotel, is to be rehabilitated as an International Women's Museum and Research Center. Patricia Porter, executive director of Sunbow Foundation Inc., a non-profit organization promoting the training and placement of minority...

Frank Loesch was a crime-fighting crusader nearly unparalleled in Chicago's history. In a life span that included Abraham Lincoln's election and assassination, the Great Chicago Fire, Prohibition and two world wars, Loesch not only saw the city transformed, but saw it transformed for the better because of his nearly constant vigilance. Loesch was a lawyer who didn't much like defending criminals, so he ended up working as corporation counsel for the Pennsylvania Railroad Co. in...

A hotel once used by Al Capone as his headquarters has been declared a Chicago landmark and the present owner thinks the notorious mobster may have left some souvenirs behind. "It would not suprise me if we found either money or dead bodies," said Patricia J. Porter, who last year bought the shuttered, 93-year-old Lexington Hotel on the South Side for $500,000. The landmark designation was awarded by the Chicago City Council to the hotel where "Scarface"...

The matzo balls and blintzes, fried kreplach and kasha plate always drew a crowd to Nathan Batt's restaurant at Michigan Avenue and Cermak Road in the former Lexington Hotel. The home of Al Capone from 1928 to 1931 — where in 1986 Geraldo Rivera famously cracked open an empty vault — the Lexington was renamed the New Michigan Hotel in 1938 in an effort to distance itself from its gangster past. Mama Batt's Restaurant was on the hotel's ground floor from the mid-1950s through...

Want to own a notorious piece of Chicago history? The modest, red-brick home once owned by Al Capone is expected to hit the market this spring for an estimated $450,000, marking a new chapter for the infamous South Side landmark that has had just two owners since the death of Capone's mother in 1952. "I think there's some value in the home's history," said Barbara Hogsette, 71, who has lived in the house since 1963 but plans to relocate to California next year to be closer to her son....

How can a city that prides itself on its architecture allow this to happen? It is bad enough that some of our treasures like the Lexington Hotel and the Reliance Building remain vacant and derelict, but now the Garfield Park Conservatory needs help and no one seems to care. We cannot continue to neglect our old buildings.

Independent movies--both made and suggested--have been popping up in the northwest suburbs lately. In West Dundee, independent filmmaker, acting coach and film-festival organizer Dave Hudson is on his third foray into kids movies. "The Block," a humorous look at a new kid's run-in and triumph over a local tough guy, is being filmed around Kane County, using local actors. Hudson, a 1991 graduate of Dundee-Crown High School, majored in television production at Southern Illinois University.

A nonprofit group trying to raise donations to open a "sealed vault" believed to be inside a former hangout of Al Capone may have to ante up to the feds what the notorious gangster was able to dodge till his death: back taxes. After learning that money might be buried behind a basement wall of the vacant, century-old Lexington Hotel on the city's South Side, the Internal Revenue Service served the Sunbow Foundation with documents showing the government is owed more than $800,000 of...

In my mailbox at WGN, I found a brick and a business card that read "Al Capone." What happened to a horse head in the bed? Either the mob is getting more politically correct or just less creative. Actually it was the calling card for Rich Larsen of Prospect Heights. He's a huge fan of the Capone Era, and the Indiana Jones of the South Loop. He stripped hundreds of squares of green and purple bathroom tile from the gangster's former suite at the Lexington Hotel. OK ... so it's not the...

The matzo balls and blintzes, fried kreplach and kasha plate always drew a crowd to Nathan Batt's restaurant at Michigan Avenue and Cermak Road in the former Lexington Hotel. The home of Al Capone from 1928 to 1931 — where in 1986 Geraldo Rivera famously cracked open an empty vault — the Lexington was renamed the New Michigan Hotel in 1938 in an effort to distance itself from its gangster past. Mama Batt's Restaurant was on the hotel's ground floor from the mid-1950s through...

What had been intended to be the site of two hotels looks like it will have condominiums instead. Originally the 1.12-acre parcel along Cermak Road between Michigan and Indiana Avenues had been slated for construction of two Marriott hotel buildings comprising 600 rooms. However, that project, approved by city officials in 1998, was never built. Richard Erlich, an Arizona-based developer, is preparing to build 320 condominiums in two buildings. A 9-story, 60-unit building is planned at the...

A developer who is seeking to rehabilitate the Lexington Hotel at Michigan Avenue and Cermak Road on Friday won one of the last Urban Development Action Grants given by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development. In its final funding round, the UDAG program awarded $70 million to 46 projects. In the 76 prior funding rounds since 1978, the popular Carter-era program gave $4.61 billion to help finance more than 3,000 developments in the nation's cities. The $2.6 million grant for the...

Stained glass floral panels, etched windows and Tiffany-style lamps decorate the interior of Southwest Stained Glass in Oak Lawn. But nothing draws attention like a panel tucked in one corner. It is an intricate, colorful portrait in stained glass of the gangster Al Capone. Pouring a stein of beer, Capone is surrounded by Chicago landmarks from the Roaring '20s, such as the Lexington Hotel and a club called the Four Deuces. This unique, backlit panel measures 5 1/2 by 7...

It's time for Jeopardy. The answer: Al Capone. Women in construction. Geraldo Rivera. Dr. Ganesan Visvabharathy. The question: Who's had a run at the Lexington Hotel at 22d Street and Michigan Avenue over the years? But who, Alex Trebek, is this Visvabharathy? Dr. Ganesan Visvabharathy-or Dr. Vish to friends and associates-has a plan to redevelop the former mob headquarters into a 290-room hotel. According to a $2.6 million Urban Development Action Grant application...

Although mobologists may be disappointed over the failure to find secret tunnels or vaults at the Lexington Hotel, some architects and engineers overseeing the demolition of Al Capone's old hangout are all smiles. In its demise, the 103-year-old building with terra cotta ornamentation is proving to be a treasure-trove of information not only for historians but for managers of older, similarly constructed buildings. And there's something for crime buffs, too: wall tile from Big Al's...

Stained glass floral panels, etched windows and Tiffany-style lamps decorate the interior of Southwest Stained Glass in Oak Lawn. But nothing draws attention like a panel tucked in one corner. It is an intricate, colorful portrait in stained glass of the gangster Al Capone. Pouring a stein of beer, Capone is surrounded by Chicago landmarks from the Roaring '20s, such as the Lexington Hotel and a club called the Four Deuces. This unique, backlit panel measures 5 1/2 by 7...

Spread the word among the guys and dolls. And watch out for falling bricks. There's a contract out on the Lexington Hotel. You know the place in the 2100 block of South Michigan Avenue, just west of McCormick Place. Big Al Capone ran his bootlegging and vice rackets out of there during Prohibition-the dry years of the 1920s when making liquor was illegal. That is, until the "G" and Eliot Ness got him on tax evasion. Now, the hotel itself is facing government assault. ...

If skeletal remains of Al Capone's enemies lie encased in concrete beneath his old South Side headquarters, it's a matter for the medical examiner. But if, as some suspect, the spoils of his criminal empire are buried there, the Internal Revenue Service wants its cut. To the IRS the notorious gangster still is an artful tax dodger, though he has been dead since 1947. So it should come as no surprise that the IRS served notice earlier this month on a group rehabilitating Capone's former...

Like a Prohibition-era "taxi club" dance girl who moved from partner to partner working for a dime a tune, the last remaining fortress of Al Capone in Chicago is again changing hands. But unfortunately for the old Lexington Hotel, once the mobster's home and headquarters, the music stopped long ago. Today, the vacant 10-story building known as an example of Chicago's turn-of-the century apartment hotels is a blight seemingly abandoned by all but history buffs. Still, what...